Current projects
Conceptualizing and Quantifying Urban Forest Patches
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Funding: NSF Socio-environmental Synthesis Ceneter (SESYNC)
Collaborators: Lea Johnson (Longwood Gardens) and Michelle Johnson (USDA Forest Service) - co-leads - and many others! Website: https://www.sesync.org/project/propose-a-pursuit/social-ecological-drivers-of-change-over-time-in-urban-woodlands Summary: Remnant and regenerating forest patches are hotspots of biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban regions. Social uses and benefits, abrupt forest edges, introduced and invasive species, and urban climate warming combine to create novel ecological conditions and management challenges in urban woodlands. An array of public, private, and non-profit organizations engage in management and stewardship of these urban woodland patches. Their efforts vary in emphasis according to organizational mandates and available resources, and fine-scale heterogeneity of land ownership in cities often limits the scope of interventions. This Pursuit will bring together experts in urban ecology, social science, forest ecology, and remote sensing with managers of urban woodlands. Together, we will develop research methodologies to integrate 1) high-resolution, long-term biophysical data from urban, suburban, and rural forest patches along multiple urban-to-rural gradients with 2) patterns of ownership, civic stewardship, and public land management, and with 3) remotely-sensed indicators of ecosystem functions. The team will produce a synthesis of these data, develop a conceptual model of the roles of public land management and civic stewardship in urban woodlands as social-ecological systems. We also will communicate findings of the synthesis, to support coordination across jurisdictional boundaries and facilitate the flow of information relevant to decision-making. Publications: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11252-020-00977-5 |
Past projects
Scenario modeling of future urban forest composition, structure and benefits |
Funding: USDA Forest Service: National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council
Collaborators: Dave Nowak (USFS), Scott Maco & Satoshi Hirabayashi (Davey), Bill Toomey (TNC), Christie Klimas (DePaul U.), and CMAP. Summary: This project will develop new tools and maps focused on identifying communities underserved by urban forest green infrastructure, evaluating resilience under future scenarios, and optimizing management strategies to mitigate disparities and risks. Specific project objectives are to: 1) develop tools within the US Forest Service’s i-Tree platform to identify current ecologically underserved locations and prioritize urban forest management practices; 2) incorporate future scenarios of tree species composition, climate, pests and urban development into tools developed in objective 1 ; 3) create databases of underserved communities within 10 US urban areas, evaluate likely risks and resilience for these communities under climate and development scenarios, and develop optimized urban forest management strategies based on current and future estimates of composition and age structure, plantable space, and benefits |